1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to systems for identifying motor vehicles, and in particular, relates to systems for providing information about stolen vehicles and vehicles subject to repossession.
2. Background
Vehicles may be repossessed when a borrower is delinquent in payment of a loan or other contractual agreement. In a common scenario, if the borrower cannot timely service the loan and is delinquent in payments, the creditor may seek to repossess the vehicle, either directly or more commonly, through an affiliated repossession company.
The borrower may willingly relinquish possession of the vehicle to the repossession company. In such circumstances, the repossession company may take possession of the vehicle at the debtor's residence. In other situations, the debtor may not willingly relinquish possession of the vehicle, and may hide the vehicle or otherwise maintain the vehicle at an undisclosed location away from his or her place of residence. This renders it difficult for the repossession company to locate the vehicle.
Further, when a vehicle to be repossessed cannot be easily located, agents, “skip-tracers,” and “spotters” associated with the repossession company may randomly view the license plates of vehicles in areas known to be frequented by the debtor, often based on the description of the vehicle. The repossession company may employ such skip-tracers and spotters, or may have contractual arrangements with the skip-tracers and spotters in other jurisdictions or with other repossession companies.
However this is very expensive, inefficient and time-consuming because the agent, spotter, or skip-tracer may have a set of documents for each vehicle to be repossessed, and must cross-reference the documents in his possession with each suspect license plate that he or she views while driving or while a passenger in a spotter vehicle.